Exam 35: Diffraction and Polarization

A beam of light passes through a polarizer and then an analyzer. In this process, the intensity of the light transmitted is reduced to 10% of the intensity incident on the analyzer. What is the angle between the axes of the polarizer and the analyzer?

How far above the horizon is the Moon when its image reflected in calm water is completely polarized?

A diffraction grating has 5000 lines per cm. The angle between the central maximum and the fourth order maximum is 47.2°. What is the wavelength of the light?

In a single slit diffraction pattern the intensity of the maxima

A 200-m radio telescope is used to investigate sources emitting a 21-cm wavelength. The minimum angular separation resolvable for this system is

A telescope that uses a mirror 249 cm in diameter is just able to resolve a double-star system that is 1.5 light-years away. Assume the light from the stars has a wavelength of 691 nm. How far apart are the two stars? One light year = 9.46 × 10¹⁵ m. (Use the approximation for θ_min: θ_min ≈ .)

A He-Ne laser (632.8 nm) is used to calibrate a grating. If the first-order maximum occurs at 20.5°, what is the grating constant (the distance between the slits)?

If light of wavelength 700 nm is sent through a slit of width of 5.0 μm, at what angle from the central maximum is the 4th order minimum?

A certain astronomical telescope has a diameter of 5.60 m. What is the minimum angle of resolution for this telescope at a wavelength of 620 nm?

State the Rayleigh criterion.

A beam of unpolarized light in air strikes a flat piece of glass at an angle of 57.3°. If the reflected beam is completely polarized, what is the index of refraction of the glass?

If the diameter of a radar dish is doubled, what happens to its resolving power assuming that all other factors remain unchanged? Its resolving power

If the lens diameter is doubled, what happens to the resolvable angle of images produced at fixed wavelength?

Sunlight reflected from the surface of a lake

Unpolarized light is passed through a polarizer-analyzer combination. The transmission axes of the polarizer and the analyzer are at 30.0° to each other. What percentage of the unpolarized light gets through the combination?

A slit of width 0.01 mm has light of wavelength 600 nm passing through it onto a screen 60 cm away. How wide (in cm) is the central maximum?

If the first maximum of one circular diffraction pattern passes through the center of a second diffraction pattern, the two sources responsible for the pattern will appear to be a single source.

If the central maximum in a single slit diffraction pattern has intensity I_o, the intensity of the secondary maximum nearest it is

When the transmission axes of two Polaroid films are perpendicular to each other, what is the percentage of the incident light which will pass the two films?

If the 5th order minimum in the diffraction pattern is at 40°, what is the highest order minimum in the pattern?